Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy
- Rebecca L. Waber, BSMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCambridge, Massachusetts;
- Baba Shiv, PhDStanford UniversityStanford, California;
- Ziv Carmon, PhDINSEADSingapore;
- Dan Ariely, PhD ariely@mit.eduMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- ANALGESIA
- COMMERCE
- DRUG COSTS
- DRUG THERAPY
- PAIN
- PLACEBO EFFECT
To the Editor: It is possible that the therapeutic efficacy of medications is affected by commercial features such as lower prices. Because such features influence patients' expectations,1 they may play an unrecognized therapeutic role by influencing the efficacy of medical therapies, especially in conditions associated with strong placebo responses.2,3 To investigate this possibility, we studied the effect of price on analgesic response to placebo pills.
Methods
In 2006 we recruited 82 healthy paid volunteers in Boston, Massachusetts, using an online advertisement. Each participant was informed by brochure about a (purported) new opioid analgesic approved by the Food and Drug Administration; it was described as similar to codeine with faster onset time, but it was actually a placebo pill. After randomization, half of the participants were informed that the drug had a regular price of $2.50 per pill and half that the price had been discounted to $0.10 …
